[dekhn]

They have plenty of publications, most of which are "we found genes assoicated with <X>".

Unfortunately, association studies don't tell you much beyond "there is a correlation between X and Y" which typically needs to be followed up with a lot more research. It's not even clear that association studies really pay their way- they cost a lot and produce associations, but the link to disease treatment is often very poor.

it's really a shame nobody has truly shown a very convincing way to convert genotyping/genomics and medical records into better treatment.

[dominotw]

>it's really a shame nobody has truly shown a very convincing way to convert genotyping/genomics and medical records into better treatment.

ugh..I am being downvoted for asking what makes this particular discovery significant . I am really curious, what are some of your thoughts on what makes this particular correlation different.

[dekhn]

There is nothing significant about this "discovery". It's just a press release, the full publication is here: http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/139/5/e28.extract However, it's pay-to-read.

Basically, the reason this is not significant is that there is no way to turn gene-disease associations into treatments. At best, it helps you focus on a gene target, but as you can see, this gene's protein product is an important player that has a role far beyond preventing/causing (or affecting the severity of) disease.

What's different (and it's not particularly different) is that this PR is in response to a social media challenge, the research was partly funded by it. Whether that means anything is hard to say- I don't really see ice bucket challenges scaling up to many diseases.

[dominotw]

thanks for your answer. I did more research on this last night and it gels with your comment.

[aab0]

Genes can be useful for treatment: http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/07/23/065540.f...

[dekhn]

that article is, at best, a very tepid endorsement.

[aab0]

It's a demonstration that even in a niche most people wouldn't think of, drug administration, there's already dozens of cost-effective medical uses, and the number is going up as more research is done and sequencing goes down.